


An Apple for the Maenad

by KannaOphelia



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: F/F, Feast of Silenus, Garden of Youth, Gen, Long Winter, Manaeds, Northern Witches, Nymphs & Dryads, Tree of Protection, Trick or Treat: Treat, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-24
Updated: 2014-10-24
Packaged: 2018-02-22 09:53:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2503565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KannaOphelia/pseuds/KannaOphelia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last autumn festival before the frost, the Dryads of the Garden of Youth awaited Silenus in vain. The only traveller who came to make the journey from the Tree of Youth to the Tree of Protection was a woman who came from the North, with eyes as beautiful and pure as a snowflake. </p><p>A treat concerning the dual sweetness of temptation and apples.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Apple for the Maenad

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deepdarkwaters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/gifts).



As autumn turned past its height and moved toward chill in the outside Wilds, sun flooded through the Garden of Youth. The trees became weighed down with the double burden of luxuriant blossoms and abundant fruit, and their dryads left them and, laughing in the sparkling sunlight, choose the very best fruit and flowers to heap at the roots of the Tree of Fruit, awaiting their festival.

Agathe alone hesitated with one perfect apple in her hand. Its mottled red brown skin did not shine like the silver apples, but there was a beauty about its simplicity and fragrance that suggested divine deliciousness beyond all that of the others her tree had given her. It was, she knew, the greatest gift her tree had grown, and the most fitting tribute tribute. Why, then, she wondered, did a curious reluctance pull her at her heart, as a memory of a fierce smile seemed to tug at the fruit in her hand?

"Come, sister, Silenus and the Maenads will be here soon! Do not linger in the shade like a naiad dreaming in the sun!" cried Elene, ever the leader, catching at Agathe's hand. "We must prepare!"

Laughing, Agathe let herself be pulled along, and did not let herself think too much about the way her hand crept to the folds of her skirts, and deposited the apple within. She heaped fruit and pink-streaked blossoms to the perfumed pile of tribute. The Maenads would be here soon, and a joy nearly as fierce as that of the madcap maidens seized her heart.

Hours passed, and the Maenads did not come. The dryads lost their smiles and the lightness in their feet, and began to cluster together in small groups in the orchard, breaking apart only to touch their trees for reassurance. Agathe's joy began to darken. She climbed her tree, which grew at the very edge of the garden, and curled up on a branch, staring over the wall of turf into the Wilds, straining to detect a quiver of dancing movement or a hint of laughter.

Night had almost fallen before the Maenads appeared at last. Fear seized Agathe's heart like the deepest of frosts, eating into her in a way that she, from her garden of perpetual summer, could not recognise or understand. The maidens, for the first time in a thousand years, dragged their steps instead of tumbling in wild pleasure, and their bright faces seemed dimmed by tears. They carried empty golden platters, ready for the tribute, but no donkey paced among them. 

Agathe pulled herself to her feet, clutching the trunk of her tree as the branch beneath her swayed in the wind. She sought out one beloved face in particular among the Maenads, but many had their hands pressed to weeping eyes, and she could not find Melaina in the twilight.

"Sisters, what ails you?" demand Elene, from her orange tree. "Where is Silenus? We have had the tribute prepared for half a day!"

A great cry went up from the Maenads. "He didn't come! We sang and danced until our feet bled, yet he never came!"

The dryads clasped each other and wept, as the Phoenix lifted its beautiful head in a mourning keen. "What shall we do? The Tree of Protection needs tribute from its source to stay healthy! Never have we failed in our tasks!"

Elene pressed her slim hands together. "Sweet maidens, can you bear the tribute to the Tree?"

"You know we cannot!" said a ringing voice, and Agathe knew it to be Melaina. The girl stepped forward, her face fierce with despair under its veil of unkempt black hair. "We cannot enter the Garden to fetch the tribute, and we cannot leave the Wilds to carry it to the Lantern Waste. Our task is merely to drink and feast with Silenus to mark the festival, as you well know."

"Then we, and all Narnia, are lost!" wailed a nymph from within the garden. "For we cannot leave our trees! Who can enter, and leave again?"

"I can," said a voice, sweeter than honey.

The Maenads broke apart, and a lady stepped among them. She was tall, with a height and abundance of curves that made the dark-haired Maenads look like slender children beside them, and the curls that spilled over her honey-dark shoulders were as richly golden as her gown. The Phoenix gave voice once more, its cry pealing across the garden.

"I have travelled far, from the North, and now I travel West. I have, you know, a little power. I will gladly convey your tribute to your Tree."

Some of the Maenads clapped, and some of the dryads smiled, but Elene's countenance was still grave. "Once before, a witch scaled the walls of our Garden, and ate our fruit. She lived to regret this; and so, I fear, will all Narnia. Why should we welcome another such as she?"

The lady smiled gently, reassuringly, patting the shoulder of a nearby Maenad. "You need not fear, lovely one. You are right in recognising my power, but not all witches are evil. I seek to enter the Garden for the sake of another, not myself."

Elene bowed her head. "Then enter through the front gates. Nymphs, rejoice! The Autumn Festival begins!"

The Maenads lifted their voices in song, whirling and cartwheeling along the perimeter of the Orchard, as within it, the dryads danced. The lady smiled to see them, although her pale eyes remained as cold and gentle as a snowflake. A Maenad pressed on her a goblet brimming with wine, and she took it, sipping contemplatively as she listened to the hymns to Bacchus, to Silenus, to the Tree of Youth, the Tree of Protection, and to the Great Lion.

Agathe alone sat at the edge of her branch, and waited. Soon enough, as her heart told her would happen--as had happened every year for three centuries--Melaina's dancing feet drew her to the wall beneath Agathe. Love and joy welled in Agathe's heart at the piquant way Melaina's full lips curved, at the black sparkle of her eyes, teh graceful sway of her body.

"Sweet sister, you remember me!"

"You jest!" Melaina laughed. "Don't you know I live to see my Agathe's mild face each year?" There was merriment on her face, but also, Agathe hoped and feared, pain.

At that moment love overcame both fear and guilt. After all, she had held back her tribute already, and Silenus was not there to see. "Melaina! I have something saved for you!" 

She tossed the perfect apple over the wall, and Melaina caught it in a sun-browned hand. For a moment, the Maenad looked up at Agathe, in awestruck recognition of what the gift meant; then she tossed her uncombed locks and bit down through the apple's skin. Agathe released her breath, her hands trembling.

"Thank you, Agathe," Melaina said, her tone unusually serious. Then the wildness came back into her face, and she flung herself at the wall, small hands digging into the turf, and pulled herself to the top. She perched level with Agathe, grinning, and held out the apple, the juice beading on its flesh. "But something so delicious should be shared with my best beloved."

Agathe reached out for the apple, her hand brushing Melaina's for the first time. She expected there to be a shock, but there was just softness so compelling that, instead of tasting the apple, she leaned forward and tasted Melaina's lips, purple with wine and sweet with apple juice.

The kiss was broken into by golden laughter. "Maidens, you dare much. Is it allowed for a Maenad to scale the walls?"

Melaina turned a savage face on the witch. "I wish I was not a Maenad. I wish I could join her in the Orchard forever!" Her arm was around Agathe's shoulders, her hand clutching so tight that Agathe revelled in the pain from the digging fingers, the Maenad's other hand clasping the brown apple. "Can your powers give me that?"

"Not quite." The Golden Lady steepled her fingertips together. "You are bound to the Wilds, little one."

"Then bear the tribute and save the Tree. Else, you are useless to me." Melaina turned away, dismissing her, and kissed Agathe again, with desperate ferocity.

"I am not quite useless." The girls broke the kiss and turned back to her. "I can give you, instead, a different gift. I can give you reach into nearly all of Narnia, including the Garden. But there is a price in loving a dryad. How will your heart fare when winter comes, and your love retreats to sleep in her tree, leaving you in the barren cold? You will be forever outcast from your madcap sisters once you make this choice, you know. What if your dryad never awakens?"

Melaina shook with glee. "Do you know nothing? Winter never will come to the Garden. I take your gift, and thank you!"

The lady strode to the fountain at the centre of the garden, and touched it with one delicate, sandled slipper. Melaina's eyes widened, and rippled like water. She gasped and shook, so that Agathe wound her arms around her to keep her safe on top of the wall.

"I name you the spirit of the Great River of Narnia. No longer Maenad, but Naiad. Able to travel from the Garden of Youth to Cair Paravel, as long as you do not leave its banks." The Golden Lady's face was difficult to read in the gathering dark. "Now, it is time for me to seek the Tree of Protection, and divine the source of the trouble." 

She flicked a hand, but Melaina was swaying with faintness, and Agathe was too preoccupied with gathering her in her arms and carrying her to the stream flowing from the Fountain to notice or care that the fruit and flowers were floating to the Maenad's platters, which themselves left their bearers and rose into the air.

Unnoticed, the bitten apple fell over the wall and rolled under the Golden Lady's feet, where she trampled it unconcerned.

Melaina revived once her feet touched the water. Unheeding the mourning calls of her sisters, she wound herself tight around Agathe, and rejoiced.

That morning, when the sun rose pale and cold over the Wilds, the eternal sunshine in the Garden of Youth seemed just a little cooler than in the centuries before.

That evening, a single leaf on Agathe's tree turned brown, and floated to the ground. Wrapped in Melaina's arms, she did not notice.

*

Agathe felt the faint stirrings of sap rise within her tree for the first time in two centuries. Blinking awake, she pulled herself from its embrace, her heart full of fear.

Dryads were leaving their trees murmuring in sleepy confusion. The Phoenix was nowhere to be seen. The fountain sat unmoving under a cloak of ice surrounded by snow. Agathe sat and wept bitter tears beside the stream, the warm, salty drops falling on the frozen surface.

Two arms, still chilled with ice, curled around her waist. "You sleep long, sister! You sleep long! But I have stayed by your side and kept your tree watered throughout the winter." The voice was choked with tears and laughter. 

The dryad turned into the naiad's kiss, as the apple tree began to bud with small, green leaves, and the rush of the stream broke through the ice, tinkling like a Maenad's laughter.


End file.
